Archive for the ‘christianity’ Category

Good’ay Mates

Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006

Well nothing too exciting has been going on. I decided to try and find a bank today. I was going to just keep my accounts with Bank of America but realized that was just stupid because there wasn’t one in town. It was a 45 minute drive to the nearest one and it just wasn’t worth it. I just spent the last hour or so at a bank across the street called Community Bank. They had a sign up that said free checking to LeTourneau students so I thought I would start there. The only thing that I have to pay for is to have a debit card… and that is only $1.50 a month so that is worth it. I ordered some sweet checks… Tom and Jerry. Don’t deny it, Tom and Jerry is the sweetest cartoon of all time! It will be nice to have some real checks this time around. My Bank of America checks were the sampler ones they had… and ever 5 checks or so was this horse in a field of purple flowers… not very manly. Every time I used them I had to explain it… not good.

Well yesterday was kind of cool… our chapel speaker was awesome. He was from XXXChurch.com (The #1 Christian Porn Site!). Someone grab the defibrillator… mom and dad probably just had a heart attack. Haha. His name was Craig Gross and he seemed to be a pretty cool guy. The whole thing started when a friend of his was in the shower, and happened to be praying and the word ‘porn’ was put in his mind. Their ministry is truly amazing. It all goes along with the statement ‘Compromise the method, not the message’. They are all about reaching out to people that struggle with pornography. At a special evening chapel he showed a movie that someone made about what they do… it was called ‘Ministry Positions’. If you aren’t laughing hysterically read the last sentence until you do! You should check it out… www.xxxchurch.com.

I went to LifePoint on Sunday and had a good time. There is something about that church that just keeps drawing me in. Hopefully by the end of this month I will know if that is where I am supposed to start serving… I just have to give Church on the Rock one more chance.

This weekend was incredibly boring. I watched way too many episodes of Alias (Season 4) and that was about all I did. Nothing really happened on the floor… no movies or anything on Friday. We ordered pizza from a place called Cheezies which was decent. I would take Dominos over that any day. Even though all of us had way too much homework, having pizza called for a movie. We ended up watching Oceans Twelve. I bought it like 2 days before we started the road trip and just haven’t had a chance to watch it. I was at Costco with Perry over in Tacoma and it was on sale for $7. So it was either pay $7 to own it or $5 to rent it.

I had two exams last week. One in Biblical Literature and the other in Accounting. I think I got at least a 90% on the Accounting one and I will be lucky if I get a 60% on the Biblical Lit one. It was on Genesis through 1 Kings and it was a lot to remember. Ohh well… hopefully the next ones will be better since we are getting closer to the new testament.

Dorm life is great… well with the exception of my roomie. He grew up in boarding schools in Papa New Guinea. He is constantly trying to get my attention and I usually just ignore him. After a while he will go out to the lobby where some other people are. He isn’t a very clean person either… there is stuff everywhere, bottles and clothes on the floor. For a while his books kept spilling all over the place blocking my wardrobe and the bathroom. It has gotten a little better but still annoying. I am definitely getting a new roommate at the end of the semester. I think I want to try to get into one of the other dorms also. I am in the Quads… there are four total and each houses 25 guys. I would like to go to either Thomas or Davis halls since they are pretty new (3-4 years). Granted the quads are only 6 years old now. If I can I would love to join Alpha Omega… that would be lots of fun… the society houses are across campus and look a lot nicer.

Classes are going well for the most part. Computer Science is a lot of fun. Accounting and Management are fun as well… learning a lot in accounting. Discrete Math is getting better so we shall see how it is in a few more weeks. I am still needing to get at tutor. Every time I go to talk to my advisor he is either in class or in meetings. Hopefully soon I can grab him. I think I will try to make it to his office before class tomorrow. Biblical Literature is still painful and always will be.

Well I best be getting back to procrastination! I only have 8 hours left. I am going to start going to bed between 12 and 1 if not earlier. I have been staying up until 2-3 and it is just stupid when you have class at 8:15 the next day. Going on 4-5 hours of sleep is killer. Last night I got 7 hours and that was pretty nice… I still was tired… maybe eventually I will make it to 8 or 9 hours a night! I am trying to kill my love for procrastination.

Peace all.

Posted in christianity, letourneau, life | 1 Comment »

It’s Tuesday

Monday, September 25th, 2006

Hello there everyone. I am seriously going to try to update this more. I know this last time was like two weeks… oops. Well Church on the Rock wasn’t as awesome as I thought. Their worship wasn’t really my style… it was an alright volume (could have been a bit louder) but a lot of repeating the same lines over and over. And it as a lot of songs I have never heard before. It almost reminded me of something you would see on TBN. I think I am going to stick with LifePoint for the next few weeks and check out Church on the Rock again in a month or so just to be sure it wasn’t just a one time thing. Also, the Pastor didn’t seem to be using the Bible which was a bit disturbing. He read out of it for the offering, and had it open during the message but never used it. I saw two verses on the screen… one for the series title slide and one at the end of the sermon that he never read off. So we shall have to see what the future holds.

Today was a pretty good day. Accounting was canceled again. Also, Biblical Literature was canceled due to the prof not being available. So I only had Discrete Mathematics and Computer Science today. I didn’t really have to go to Computer Science but I went for like 10 minutes. It was just a lab day to work on a project that was due. I got mine done a few hours ago. Nothing too fancy… just a magazine subscription calculator.

Well I think I am going to go to bed… I can get like 7 hours tonight! Woot!

Peace y’all.

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Mornin Y’all

Sunday, September 24th, 2006

Well last week I went to breakfast at 9:10 AM to find out that the cafeteria had closed at 9. So this week I was planning on going at 8:50 or so, right before they close the doors. Well somehow last night I got the idea that it was actually 8 AM when they locked the doors. So I got up at 7:30 AM to make it to the cafeteria at 7:50 or so… well on the way there I realized that I was an hour early… DANGIT… I could have slept another hour… ohh well.

Well lots has been going on the past few weeks… nothing too exciting though. I went to Church on the Rock last Saturday for a Sean Feucht concert and it was incredible. The most amazing time of worship I have ever had. They played for about 2 hours and only did about 6 or 7 songs. The songs were at least 10 minutes long. Being down in the south can make the churches a bit more shall we say ‘alive’. During the concert the band would play the main part of the song then just keep the music going along… and people would be praying, singing, listening, dancing, etc. It was so amazing. I don’t even think I can put to words what happened there. There was this Black lady across the isle from me and she had the most incredible voice I have ever heard. For the last two songs, everyone grouped up at the front of the stage. There were even people moshing. I wanted to talk to that black lady after the concert but she was gone. So all in all… if there is ever a Sean Feucht concert in town… GO!

Also, part of what made the concert so good was the amazing sound system that Church on the rock had. There were at least 6 or 7 powered Mackie speakers up in the ceiling. Their lights were amazing as well. They had 4 small color projectors mounted on the walls of the stage. Also, there were 4 larger projectors aimed at screens behind the stage. Then they had at least 4 color projector lights with movable mirrors on them for the rotating image effects. One of the coolest ones they had made it look like the back screens were water. Real cool.

Well I really like Church on the Rock. Going again today to check them out again. I am really interested to see what their real worship band sounds like. Last week they had Sean Feucht and band playing for their Sunday services… so I got to hear him twice. Church on the Rock seems like a more mature church as they have been around a lot longer. Their Pastor is outstanding, right now he is talking about different generations of people… like baby boomers, millennials, etc. If the worship is awesome then this could very well be my new church home. While LifePoint has been awesome, I really like the idea of coming to an older church.

Had three exams this week… Discrete Mathematics, Principles of Management and Computer Science. I got a 40% in Math (average was 70%) and a 65% in Management (average was 64.48%). Still no grade posting for CS. I have two exams this week… Accounting Principles I and Biblical Literature. Accounting should be super easy… as for Bib Lit… probably not going to be so hot. I hate reading the bible in the context we do… like 10-20 pages at a time. I can’t understand that much let alone remember it. The in class quizzes we have had so far are on things like ‘What was the city Ruth came from’ or ‘What were the three cities Joshua’s armies burnt down [can't remember if he was the right person for this question]‘. That is just crazy… I can’t remember stuff like that.

FYI to all of you that get tons of credit card offers: look for a phone number on the back on the offer for an opt-out request. I called it and got a form in the mail to PERMANENTLY remove my name from the list the reporting agencies give out. Definitely worth the time [probably spent 10 minutes on the phone with their stupid computer]!

I got a copy of the new version of Windows Vista. It is still in the testing stage… at Release Candidate 1 right now. Dr. Varnell, my computer science professor and advisor downloaded it for me. The school has stupid bandwidth restrictions. We get 3 GB of upload / download a month. That is so stupid… I could use that much in a day. I am joining up with some other guys that are trying to get it either removed or increased. The school said they did a lot of research on it and that all schools are doing it… such a lie. One of the other guys in my dorm got info from around 100 other universities and they either had no limit or had it set to like 3 GB a WEEK not month. One school had a 40 GB a day limit. So ridiculous.

Well I think that is enough for now. I can’t decide if I want to get some more sleep or find some work to do…

Peace Y’all.

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Discrete mathematics will be my death….

Wednesday, September 13th, 2006

Well two weeks in now. I need to start posting more but I just keep waiting until too late… my keyboard is a bit noisy and I don’t want to wake up the roomie.

Well as the title says… I hate discrete mathematics. Whoever mixed up numbers and letters was just plain stupid. Whoever mixed up numbers, letters and backwards/upside-down letters was beyond drunk. It is very confusing… especially doing proofs. The past few days in proofs we have been doing stuff like proving if a number is even or odd… there is no proof!!! it just is!!!!! Well we had an advising chapel today so afterwards I went up to my advisor, Dr Varnell and told him of my woes. He is going to hook me up with a tutor to try and help me through this. I think that if I had a different teacher it would be different but the only one is Dr. Fast. He is totally a math geek, which isn’t necessarily bad but he isn’t too good at communicating.

Well nothing really exciting has been going on. I went to LifePoint on Saturday and that was a cool experience. I ended up sleeping in on Sunday though instead of going to another church. This Sunday I will go to Church on the Rock which is about 10 minutes away. I have heard lots of good things about their church so we shall see how it goes.

Had an Accounting quiz today and it went really well. Our professor, Dr. Rowe is awesome, the day before the quiz she told us exactly what to study. So last night I just went through and typed up some notes and I think I only missed one question. It was on which financial statement and where would ‘Payments Received in Advance’ go. I put Current Assets because I was thinking it was an asset… in respect that it was essentially cash. However, it is a Current Liability because the payment has been received so we owe services to someone. It makes sense now that I have heard it that way. I must have just missed that in class.

I am still trying to find time to get pictures posted. I have been too busy procrastinating on homework to get it done. Hopefully soon… sorry.

One thing we do on our floor is share out our iTunes collections so that others can listen. It is a cool way to do things… I have found a few good artists by browsing around. One really cool one is Jim Brickman. A majority of his stuff is piano instrumentals. Good study music for sure… nice and mellow.

Well I think that is all that is important. I need to do some reading, eat lunch then take a power nap so I can stay awake in Biblical Literature.

Peace.
-Frost

Posted in christianity, school | 1 Comment »

A Week In

Tuesday, September 5th, 2006

Well it has been a week since school started… and a week since I last posted. Things are going well. I dropped the Cornerstones class because it wasn’t what I thought it would be… and since I am a transfer student… I didn’t have to take it in the first place. So Tuesdays and Thursdays are wonderful days because I only have a class from 9:30-10:50. The other classes are going good… the only class I see as a problem is going to be Biblical Literature. That class is just painful… reading the Bible isn’t bad but having to read two different books by Zondervan is.

Went to LifePoint again on Sunday. That church is just awesome. To top it all off… their band did the song ‘When I Think About the Lord’ by Shane & Shane (well James Huey wrote it) which just happens to be one of my absolute favorite worship songs. Here are the lyrics…

——————————————————
when i think about the Lord
how He saved, how He raised me
how He filled me with the Holy Ghost
how He healed me to the uttermost
when i think about the Lord
how he picked me up
turned me around
how He set my feet
on solid ground

it makes me want to shout
hallelujah! thank you, Jesus!
Lord, you’re worthy
of all the glory, and all the honor
and all the praise!
——————————————————

I am going to start going there at 7PM on Saturdays and then checking out a few others on Sunday mornings. I don’t know if anything can top how LifePoint has been though. They do an awesome job of keeping everything relevant and it is definitely sweet meeting in a warehouse. I talked to Pastor Brian afterwards and told him I was looking at coming there and if I do I want to get plugged in. He said that they had some openings on the tech team and that they would love the help. Another cool thing is my admissions counselor for LU, Carl Arnold, has been going there for quite a while now and is on the tech team. So we shall see what God’s leading on this is.

Nothing else really exciting has been happening. I have just been pretty busy. Today will be lots of homework since I don’t have any more classes today.

Sunday afternoon as I was taking a nap and some of the upperclassmen came in and handed me the first part of our EO [Extended Orientation] / Initiation. We have this green flag that we have to get 19 signatures of our sister floor [ELH3] and 10 random signatures of ladies on campus. Well that night about 10 of us went up to ELH3 and I was able to take care of 18. I also got 9 of the random ones. Now the funny thing about this task is we can be asked to do anything in order to get their signatures. Well for 2 of the ladies up on ELH3, the had us wash their dishes. For another one I went to the Hive [a campus food shop that is open late] and got her a cheeseburger and fries [she paid for it though]. For the last one that night, Jason, Craig and myself waited outside of Dorm 4 for her to come out [she was visiting friends up there]. Well when she came out we walked up to her and asked her for her autograph. She was going to be nice and just sign it but her brother and friends were up on the third floor yelling out the window that she should make us do something. Well she picked me to have to go up into Dorm 4, find her brother and tell him that I was in love with her. It was pretty funny… his response was just ‘great’. That was actually pretty fun.

Then Monday night I still needed one signature from our sister floor, Alisha, the RA. I also needed one more random one. Well I tried calling Alisha but she wasn’t in. So after a few hours of waiting around I just went over to the plaza around midnight, outside the building just hoping she would be out there. Unfortunately she wasn’t, but there was about 10 people just hanging out… and I was able to get my last random signature. She was going to sign it but the guys out there talked her into making me sing twinkle twinkle little star, dancing and shaking my butt. It had to be pretty funny. Good times though.

As I was walking back to our dorm, Alisha just happened to be walking up. We talked for a bit and I told her of what Jenna did the night before. So she said that I should call her dad. So I gave him a ring and this is how it went. “Hello Mr. Jackson. I just met your daughter Alisha 10 minutes ago. My name is Eric Trudeau and I am a freshman at LeTourneau University. I am calling to ask your permission to take your daughter out on a date.” His response was awesome… he said he would even pay for it. That was one cool guy. So I got Alisha’s signature and brought it back to our RA… I was the second one to complete it.

Well I think that I am going to play a game for a bit, eat lunch then hit the books. Peace y’all.

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Howdy

Sunday, August 27th, 2006

Well I finally have a good chunk of time to do some blogging…

Well last Tuesday night we arrived in Tucumcari, NM and stayed at a hotel. Wednesday morning we headed to Quay, where my grandma Jo grew up. After a few wrong turns we were on the right road and headed down about 30 miles, the house was only supposed to be about 15 miles down. We turned around and stopped at some random house along the way. We asked the lady if she knew of a two story brick house and she said there was lots of them around. My dad then told her that it was where Josephine Dunlap grew up and she perked up and said ohh yeah… head down two miles and it is on the right. Unfortunately the gate was locked and it was up about 1,000 feet or so. I took some pictures and will post those soon. From there we headed out for McKinney, TX. On the way to McKinney the Audi reached the 200,000 mile mark woot for the Audi, it made it.

Got in around 7PM and they had Little Caesars pizza waiting for us. Now if you have never had Little Caesars before you are missing out, plain and simple. It has to be some of the greatest pizza around. There used to be two of them in Bremerton and Silverdale but they closed up a long time ago. Their bread sticks are totally awesome. Alright, back to the story. We just hung out and talked the rest of the night. Brandon, Amy and Riley are doing great and have a very nice house. And a nice surprise for everyone, they have another baby on the way.

Well we left McKinney around 8AM and started the trek to Longview. It was about a 3 hour drive. We took the 320 to the 69 to the 80 (staying far away from Dallas) and saw very little traffic. Maybe 20 cars every mile or so. So if you ever make the drive, that is the way to go.

We got into Longview around 11AM and spent the next half hour or so trying to find the college. The map they gave us didn’t seem to be very accurate. We were an hour ahead of schedule for our orientation time so we went up to the RG LeTourneau museum. That guy made some incredible stuff. Very cool.

Well that night we just did some random stuff and hung out. Nothing too special. Friday morning I took my dad to the Longview Airport at 4:30AM. That was so early. We got there and the place looked like it was abandoned. The lobby was locked and we weren’t sure what to do. We circled around and were going to go to the security office and saw someone walking out of the main building… the guy had just unlocked the building. Said see ya and gave my dad some hugs and he went inside and I drove off. On the way out I made a wrong turn and ended up heading to Kilgore, TX. Oops… got turned around and started heading back to Longview… then I decided to turn around again. I realized that my dad’s plane wouldn’t leave for the next hour and a half or so and he was in there sitting by himself. So I headed back to the airport and sat with him until he headed through the gate. I am definitely glad that I did that… beacuse thinking about it… that is the last time I will see my dad until Christmas.

We definitely had a great time driving down. One thing that my dad said that keeps coming out in my mind is this… he said he had been thinking and realized that our paths aren’t going to cross too much anymore. Wow. It hurts typing this right now.

Well the rest of Friday was mostly registration stuff. My classes will be Computer Science I, Biblical Literature, Principles of Management, Discrete Mathematics, Accounting Principles I, and a LeTourneau class called Cornerstones. It is just kind of like a college basics class that helps you find out some things about yourself and develop some good study habits.

Saturday was not a good day. I got the Bacterial Meningitis vaccine on Friday and the lady said that you could feel flu like symptoms. Well I didn’t really notice it on Friday but Saturday was our incoming students service project. Our various teams broke up and did things around the community. The transfer students had the task of roadside cleanup. Our group did a street south of the campus that was totally trashed. I think about 10-11 bags total in less than half a mile. It was at least 90 degrees out and with the sun beating down and that shot doing who know what to my body I was not feeling good. At a few times I felt like I was about to puke. There was one of the city guys that came by a few times to give us water. Another time a lady from the Longview paper came by and snapped some pictures and took our names. She offered to go to the store and get us some water as well… that was definitely a blessing. At lunch I could hardly keep a ham sandwich down… I took a nice long nap after that though. Later in the afternoon I got smart and took some Advil and that cleared things up a lot… it did take about an hour for it to kick in though. I had a mega headache.

Saturday we had a church fair where churches in the area came to share info with the students. Some looked awesome and others were definitely the hymn singing, suit and tie type. Today a group of 4 of us went to LifePoint Church [http://www.lifepointonline.com]. That was totally an awesome experience. They meet in a warehouse in town. A very cool atmosphere and the service was awesome. The worship was incredible…. a great band and it was all upbeat, contemporary music. They had communion today and that was another unique experience. They had six tables setup at the front of the building and had people in groups of 15 or so head up as they feet lead. The table was candlelit and it created a nice atmosphere. They passed out the bread, then a leader at the table read out the verses and prayed. Then the same thing for the wine (well grape juice or whatever). I think that was a really cool way to do things. Next week I think I am going to check out Church on the Rock [http://www.cotr.cc]. They have a college group called Life Challenge [http://lifechallenge.org] and it looks pretty sweet. There are a few more that look promising and I will check those out as time allows.

As for the computer, I got it setup the Thursday night and everything seemed ok at first, then it started slowing down and then I finally decided to reboot it. After that it gave me a Smart Status Bad (aka your harddrive is hosed). It was my windows drive which fortunately only has windows on it and very little data. I have everything backed up on the external though. Well I got it out and got windows installed on another drive I brought with me. I did an advanced replacement on the other drive since it is under warranty and should get that this week. I think Western Digital is in Texas somewhere so that should help a lot on getting the computer back up fully very soon.

Well I think this is it for tonight. It is 11:45 now and I need to head for bed soon. I will post more on the dorm/room mate and such another time. Tomorrow will be stuff like getting books, yearbook photos (we have to wear a button up shirt and a tie. Luckily I brought mine. They have jackets that we can use because I definitely don’t have one. I would love to hear from everyone. Drop me an email, leave a comment or give me a ring. All my contact info is on http://www.frosteddark.com/Contact.aspx.

Peace

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